Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware on box today I'm shifting focus a little bit after a few weeks of testing monitors non-stop because I think it was a couple of weeks ago now that Intel launched a new collection of ninth generation eighth series processes for gaming and high performance laptops so then of course means we need to revisit laptops to see how these new chips stack up Intel's the last couple of product lines have been a bit confusing with multiple code names and architectures but across different series current you series chips for ultra portable laptops are still branded as 8th gen and a codenamed whiskey Lake while these h-series chips get a bump up to ninth gen and form part of coffee like refresh the same as current desktop CPUs most of Intel's nitrogen laptop parts aren't particularly exciting and don't add much new to the table the core i5s are still four core eight thread parts and the cry sevens are still six core twelve thread models we're still on 40 nanometers with whatever number of pluses were up to now the IG GPU is also the same not that anyone cares much about that in this sort of form factor that's typically paired with it discrete GPU where the improvements are coming depends on the CPU for the cry 5 models we're getting very modest clock speed jobs the 9300 H is just 100 megahertz higher for its base and boost clock while the 9400 H doesn't even get a base clock increase just an additional hundred megahertz increase to the boost meanwhile the level 3 cache of 8 megabytes stays the same for the core i7s we do get a cache increase from nine megabytes 12 mega bytes and the 9750 h has received the biggest clock jump relative to the 8750 h it goes from a 2.2 gigahertz base and 4.1 gigahertz boost to a 2.6 key hurt space and 4.5 gigahertz boost so that's a 400 megahertz increase across the board the 9850 H is more modest again with no base coat gain and 300 megahertz extra on the boost given the 8750 aja now the 9750 h are the most commonly used H series processors especially for the majority of gaming notebooks I do find this specification breakdowns interesting the new 758 sits a lot closer to the 9850 H then the corresponding 8th gen parts and the 9750 H is the only chip to get between 10 and 20% clock speed increases it looks like Intel is targeted gains for this CPU specifically knowing how popular it is to ensure that at least some nice gen parts deliver actual performance increases and then of course where I haven't talked about yet other new core on nine models which are indeed eight cores and 16 threads to match the top end core oh nine desktop models the I 999 a thk can even reach 5 gigahertz like the 9900 K within a 45 watt TDP supposedly these eight core core i knows replace the single 8th gen core i 9 which restore 6 core patches with higher clocks while it is interesting to see eight core cpus come to laptops in acclaimed 45 watt TDP until do state they're targeting muscle books with these chips of course Intel just made up muscle books as a product category for this cpu launch but basically it means those super chunky beast gaming laptops rather than the more mid tier or slim offerings that most people buy this leaves the quinine is more a niche CP rather than an 8 core laptop CPU accessible to all as you might have seen from the title of this video the focus today is on the core i7 9 750 H which is the new mainstream H series laptop processor there will be seen in many many gaming laptops outside of the 8 core ones it's probably the most exciting chip as well given the larger than usual clock speed increases and its widespread use specifically I want to focus on the difference between the 9 750 H and the 8750 H given I think this would be on the mind of most buyers looking at grabbing a new laptop especially with the staggered releases between Nvidia on the GPU side and Intel the CPU side many laptops are available with the same GPU inside but a choice between the 9 750 X or the a 750 H a final word on the spec stuff before digging into some performance stuff a notice has been dragged down a little bit but there is a lot to get through Intel does list the maximum turbo clock for the 9 750 H at 4.5 gigahertz although this only applies to a single core with two cores active it drops down to four point four gigahertz then it follows down in a hundred megahertz increments for each additional active core down to four gigahertz for six cores active this differs again from the 87 58 which allows 4.1 gigahertz on two cores 4 gigahertz and up to 4 cores then 3.9 gigahertz on 6 cores so when the 9750 H is fully utilized on 6 cores it's Matt turbo clock does end up only 100 megahertz higher than the 8750 H this is also something to keep in mind and shows that a good portion of intel's improvements here have targeted single or low core count usage for testing the cryo 790 750 h i received two laptops one from gigabyte and the other from msi the gigabyte model is the Auris 15 which features a new 240 hertz display but is a little loud on the cooler side with some what an annoying kula noise profile the msi option is the GE 75 Raider a larger 17-inch machine both occupy that sort of mid size mid tier option in the market so it's nice and refreshing not to test a cooling restricted slim in life for the first time around here for other hardware both are equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce artex 2070 laptop GPU so that's the full laptop variant not max-q also getting 16 gigabytes of dual-channel ddr2 NT 666 which is the maximum speed there's 9 758 supports again no movement with these new cps towards supporting higher frequencies both are 1080p displays as well and fast nvme SSDs the first thing I want to explore and this is crucial for the rest of the performance section are power limits and clock speeds laptops are a highly restricted form factor so even if Intel gives the CPU the option to run it up to 4 gigahertz across 6 cause power limits will almost always prevent the CPU from actually hitting those clocks in long term workloads unlike with fully unleashed desktop systems what we've seen over the last few years with Intel's H series products is that OMS tend to ignore the actual TDP ratings in favour of higher PL 1 and PL 2 limits which pushes up clock speeds with quad core Core i7 7700 HQ laptops we typically saw PL 1 or the longer-term turbo limit sitting around 45 watts with the eye 78758 in many laptops that jumped up to 52 watt so thereabouts which is notably higher than the actual 45 watt TDP with time limits removed as well I'm not going to get into the whole TDP argument about whether this is in spec or out of spec behavior but at the end of the day om spelt that they could handle the new six core CPUs in their designs with a higher power limit and to achieve better performance they allowed it and with the i7 9750 H we're again seeing around a 52 appeal to limit or though in the MSI more lives a little higher at around 54 watts not a big difference there though PL - limits have also increased a bit to allow the higher short-term turbo frequencies my i7 9750 H test laptops were configured to 80 watts compared to 70 watts for a typical 8750 H but the real story here is that PL one limit given the 9 750 H is basically the same architecture built on the same process node with the same core configuration we can't really be expecting higher real-world clock speeds within the same power limit and that's basically what we get in terms of actual clock speeds the cry 78750 HD mike gigabyte arrow 15 X 9 sits around 3.1 gigahertz long term in a Cinebench r20 run after initially hitting three point three gigahertz the cry 797 58 in my gigabyte Rs 15 sits around 3.1 gigahertz long term in a center bench our 20 run after initially hitting three point three gigahertz so in other words identical behavior so when we look at Cinebench our 20 performance lo and behold both systems perform roughly the same in the multi-threaded test the MSI model does clock slightly high and therefore performs slightly better but not considerably so the simple fact is it takes more than simply increasing clock speeds on paper to achieve a real-world performance improvement when every other aspect of the CPU remains the same including its power limitations and this is what we'll see throughout these performance charts here's another one for Cinebench r15 with a much wider range of systems in the charts the MSI model performs well in the multi-threaded test but crucially it's not the fastest system and actually gets beaten by an a su slap top with the AI 78758 inside the gigabyte laurel is more middle of the pack it's not slow but it's nothing really special it is a little more favorable to the msi model in the single threaded test where it clocks in 13% faster than the average Cry 78758 result that's those higher single coil clocks coming to play in x264 encoding the core i7 9750 h laptops do perform well in pass 1 but the gigabyte system falls back to the pack in the second pass the msi model is outright fastest but is only very slightly ahead of the well performing a sous models to the tune of just 1% know exactly the upgrade some would be wanting here handbrake is similar this is a long test that falls almost entirely under the pl-1 limit and again the MSI model performs well but it's not the outright fastest system and gets beaten by to a seuss high 78758 models the Auris 15 is no faster than gigabytes error of 15 X 9 my premier benchmark with lumetri effects while it does utilize the GPU somewhat become CPU limited after you're running at GTX 1060 or so so once again we're in a situation where the MSI model is not the fastest but performs well while the gigabyte model is no different to most typical core 78758 laptops you've probably seen a chart like this the previous few times Adobe Photoshop with the CPU limited iris blur effect is a good showing for the 9 750 HP isn't ultimately faster than the a 750 H finally we see something slightly different in 7-zip the two core i7 97 58 laptops sit atop the charts but only just the gigabyte model is only 1% faster than the fastest 8750 H laptop while the MSI model fares a little better slowly in 4% faster not earth-shattering margins and unlikely to sway anyone to ninth gen system MATLAB doesn't benefit from the core i7 97 58 over the core i7 8750 H same performance depending on which two systems you directly compare I'll also just quickly show PC mark 10 he a bit of a mess because each system has a different GPU and the test isn't a pure CPU workload but once again you can't really see a much separation between the nine 7:58 systems and other systems final few charts for now really just summarized the whole situation nicely here we have the gigabyte or s 15 with its core i7 9750 h pitted against the average kuroh 78758 results we're seeing a tiny 2.8 percent performance gain on average and that evaporates to a performance deficit when compared to one of the fastest chorus of an a 758 laptops that I've tested and a soos Strix car to variant the results are a little more favorable for the MSI model eight percent faster than the average cry 78758 laptop is a strong result and there are particularly good results in Cinebench single thread and 7-zip compression but compared to a fast chorus of an a7 58 and that margin is cut to just 4% which probably isn't going to cut it for most buyers something I haven't really talked about is how the core i7 97 58 stacks up against the quad core Core i7 70 782 because that will be a common upgrade path for a lot of buyers as the 1970 58 is very similar to the 87 58 we're looking at up to 50% gains are high in some workloads with an average in this selection of tasks of 42 percent for gaming unfortunately I don't have a lot to say on this topic yet because the two laptops I received to review both had our text 20 70 s in them which is a GPU I never tested alongside the eye 78758 or really any other laptop CPUs without a good apples to apples comparison there's really no good data to show here however my generalized impression so far is that like with the productivity workloads there hasn't been any progress in gaming performance when CPU limited CPU heavy games like hitman two are really faster than expected and the 97 58 doesn't have noticeably higher clock behavior than the 8750 18 games at best I anticipate maybe a 5 percent improvement depending on the models you are comparing but there are a lot of variables at stake here and having say only single channel memory will make a much larger impact than having the 87 58 over the 97 58 so at this point I think a lot of you can guess what the conclusion to this video will be I can't say I'm surprised at this outcome given the foundations for the new core i7 9 750 H are identical to the Cry 78758 but with Intel showing up to 400 megahertz increases in base clocks and boost clocks which admittedly dropped to as low as a hundred megahertz we're looking at the full clock table I was expecting a little more and I think a lot of buyers might be expecting more than is actually being delivered the reality is from the data I've collected I can't honestly say the core i7 9750 H is definitively faster than the cryo 78758 in real world REM implementations it's looking like the two CPUs are about equal in general and at best the 9750 H is slightly faster if you get a favorable matchup between two laptops but it might also be slower as evidenced by comparing my gigabyte 9th gen test systems to some last Genesis laptops this presents a bit a tricky situation for laptop buyers to figure out which of two given systems is faster you'll have to dig into specific model reviews and comparisons this is similar to making a choice between laptops within a generation rather than what usually happens when comparing across generations for example it was clear that laptops with the core i7 8750 H were faster than those with the previous query 770 700 HQ which made that choice quite easy but here there's no clear distinction with that in mind I think it's fair to say that in general there's not much difference between the 87 58 and 97 50 H so if an 87 50 H system with otherwise equal specs is cheaper than a new 97 58 system you'd have to pick the last gen model and well that's not great news for OMS that have spent time specifically building new 97 58 laptops and I've often discounted their last gen offerings it's really a bit of a pointless product we would have been fine continuing on with the same performance from the trusty old 8750 h that's not to say it's necessarily a bad product because if you do find a 97 50 inch laptop at a good price it shouldn't be notably slower than a typical a 758 system and will definitely provide a big performance jump over 7th gen laptops or older but it's not something you'd upgrade to from an 8th gen core i7 and you really shouldn't believe it's faster just based on the spec sheet at least with the way OMS implement these processes these days so yeah that's the Intel Core i7 9750 H I think the real interest in the 9th gen line for laptops is with those new eight core CPUs although we're unlikely to see them in these sorts of form factors that I looked at today with the MSI and gigabyte models speaking of these laptops quite like the MSI Morel it's nothing super special or crazy but it gets the job done and is decently powerful really like the 240 Hertz display on the Auris 15 but the cooler noise ended up groaning my gears by the end of the review process so not as much of a fan of that particular one as always you can subscribe for more laptop content and other reviews consider supporting us on patreon to get access to some cool live streams and other stuff might be a good idea to jump on board before Computex and I'll catch you in the next one